Publications describing conventional methods and systems for accessing databases via the telephone and publications on subjects related to these technologies, such as speech recognition publications, include the following:
U.S. Pat. No. 4,608,460 to Carter, entitled "Comprehensive Automatic Directory Assistance Apparatus and Method Thereof; PA1 WO Patent No. 88/02965 to Daudelin, entitled "Directory Assistance Call Processing and non-Supervisory Signal Monitoring Arrangements"; PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 4,650,927 to James, entitled "Processor Assisted Communication System using Tone-Generating Telephones"; PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 5,255,310, to Kim, entitled "Method of Approximately Matching an Input Character String with a Key Word and Vocally Outputting Data"; PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 4,674,112 to Kondraske, entitled "Character pattern Recognition and Communications Apparatus"; PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 5,214,689 to O'Sullivan, entitled "Interactive Transit Information System"; PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 4,979,206 to Padden, entitled "Directory Assistance Systems"; PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 5,131,045 to Roth, entitled "Audio-Augmented Data Keying"; PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 5,052,038 to Shepard, entitled "Apparatus and Method for Obtaining information in a Wide-Area Telephone System with Digital Data Transmission Between a Local Exchange and an Information Storage Site"; PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 3,928,724 to Byram, entitled "Voice-Actuated Telephone Directory-Assistance System"; PA1 Church K. W., Phonological Parsina in Speech Recognition, Kluwer Academic Publ, 1987; PA1 Colangelo R. D., "Directory Assistance for the Visually Impaired", SouthEastcon 89, Vol 3, pp. 1168-1171, 1989; PA1 Fast L., Ballantine R., "Dialing a Name: Alphabetic Entry Through a Telephone Keypad", SIGCHI, Vol 20(2) pp. 34, 1988; PA1 Glowacz D., "RBOCs Vocalize Operator Services", Telephone Engineer & Management, Vol 95(7) pp. 25-30, 1991; PA1 Holmgren J. E., "Toward bell System Applications of Automatic Speech Recognition", The Bell System Technical Journal, Vol 62(6) pp. 1865-1881, 1983; PA1 Jack M. A., "Design and Evaluation of Automated Telephone Services", IEE Colloquium on Telecommunications, pp. 61-64, 1992; PA1 Klatt D. H., "Review of Text-to-Speech Conversion for English", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol 82(3) pp. 737-793, 1987; PA1 Lennig M., "Putting Speech Recognition to Work in the Telephone Network", Computer, Vol 23(8) pp. 35-41, 1990; PA1 Myers C. S., Rabiner L. R., "An Automated Directory Listing Retrieval System based on Recognition of Connected Letter Strings", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol 71(3), pp. 716-727, 1982; PA1 Ohyama Minoru, "A Knowledge-Based Directory Assistance System", Future Generation Computer Systems, Vol 5(1) pp. 109-117, 1989; PA1 Pelton G. E., "Designing the Telephone Interface for Voice Processing Applications", Speech Technology, Vol 5(1) pp. 18-21, 1989; PA1 Schalk T. B., "Automating Operator-Assisted Calls Using Speech Recognition", Eurospeech 89, Vol 1 pp. 441-444, 1989; PA1 Veith R. H., "Information Retrieval via Telephone Keypad and Voice: Experiences with Telephone Directories", National Online Meeting Proceedings, Vol 1 pp. 443-451, 1990; PA1 Veith R. H., "Operator Assisted Services with Automated Responses", Audiotex, Vol 1 pp. 19-28, 1986; PA1 Rabiner L., Juang B., Fundamentals of Speech Recognition, Prentice-Hall, 1993, pp. 43-52; PA1 Hall, P. A. "Approximate string matching", Computing surveys, Vol. 12(4), pp. 381-402, 1980; PA1 Salomaa, A., "Computation and Automatation", Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 44-55; PA1 Tremblay, J. P.; Sorenson, P. G., "An introduction to data structures with applications", McGraw-Hill, 1976, pp. 316-318; PA1 Vitale, T. "An algorithm for high accuracy name pronunciation by parametric speech synthesizer", Computational Linguistics, Vol. 17(3), pp. 257-276, 1991; PA1 Lorenz, A., Stochastic Automata Constructive Theory, John Wiley and Sons, 1974; and PA1 Aldefeld, B. "Automated directory listing retrieval system based on isolated word recognition", Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 68(11), pp. 1364-1379, 1980.
WO Patent No. 89/00793 to Padden, entitled "Directory Assistance Systems";
The disclosures of all above references and publications cited therein are hereby incorporated by reference.